Immaculate Red Pig replica will be at RM Sotheby’s Paris auction on February 5 2020
ROASTING HOT
An incredible replica of the famous Red Pig racer from the 1970s is going up for auction in February 2020. Due to go under the hammer at the RM Sotheby’s event in Paris, the car is being sold without a reserve price attached to it, which could make it a potential bargain for a bidder that’s looking for a very special Mercedes.
As the popular story goes, the original racer from the 1970s started from a damaged 300SEL that an early AMG team fitted with a 6.8-litre V8 producing around 420bhp. Together with lightweight alloy panels, a widened track and larger wheelarches to cover the wider tyres, the car surprised plenty of people, and fellow racers, when it won its class and came second overall at the 1971 Spa 24-hour race, which it began on the starting grid in fifth place.
However, its strange proportions gained it the nickname of the ‘Red Pig’, and once its success had passed, it was sold on to an aircraft company for some kind of high speed tyre testing, and was then lost forever.
Since then, there have been a handful of faithful replicas built to honour its accomplishments, including one example by Mercedes-Benz itself. This particular example started as an accident-free, 1969 model year 300SEL 6.3 and was restored to a Red Pig replica by the Mercedes-Benz specialist at Arthur Bechtel Classic Motors in Böblingen, Germany. The car was purchased by James Goo Kim, the CEO of D.Parts in South Korea, directly from Arthur Bechtel and it has covered less than 500 miles since the conversion.
The car’s look seems perfect and will no doubt attract attention. The interior has been built to mimic the racer’s as well.
